


City on the Edge of Whatever

by Kahvi



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: F/F, Parallel Universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 13:45:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3070382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahvi/pseuds/Kahvi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rimmer and Lister are stuck for months in the terrifying alternate world where men and women's gender roles are reversed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	City on the Edge of Whatever

**Author's Note:**

> A silly little thing, written for an Advent Calendar Challenge.

«You’re wearing a hat.»

«Yeah. So?»

«A blue, wooly hat.»

«Well, you can hardly expect me to just walk out there with a smegging H emblazoned on my forehead, now can you!”

“But it’s July,” Lister sighed. Even in their little basement flat, it was getting too warm for comfort. Perhaps she’d feel better if she could find something a little less warm than this plaid fleece shirt, but beggars – which they very nearly were – could not be choosers. 

“I don’t care if it’s the bowels of hell itself; I’m not risking it.” Rimmer flung herself into the rickety sofa they’d rescued from a nearby dumpster. “You’ve seen what those people are like – there’s no telling what they’ll do if they find out I’m made of a series of loosely connected photons.”

“At least you’re corporeal,” Lister muttered. Falling through furniture would have been even harder to explain than fonts stuck your face.

“It’s murder on my hair, I’ll tell you that.”

“So fix it.”

“I don’t know how!” Rimmer punched the sofa in frustration. “I always got Hilly to help me do it. Anyway, she-“

“-he,” Lister corrected. 

“He, she, whatever gender that goited machine is today, has been all flustered since the kids arrived.” 

It was moments like these that made Lister wish Rimmer were still soft-light. It made punching her a lot more excusable, if significantly less satisfying. “Yeah, thanks a lot for that, gal. I wasn’t worrying quite hard enough that my _children are still on Red Dwarf_ while I’m stuck in this smeg-forsaken dimension.” She sat down on the stairs, heavily. “If only we could figure out what made us end up here. There must have been some malfunction with the Time Drive.”

“You don’t say,” Rimmer muttered.

“It’s only supposed to let you travel through time, not space and dimensions. I mean, it’s right there in the name.”

“Well, I’m sure sulking about it for a few more weeks will do us no end of good.”

Lister threw an empty can of soup at her, which turned out not to be empty after all. At least hard light holograms could still feel pain.

* * *

“Someone called me a lesbian today,” Rimmer yelled, almost before she’d come all the way down the stairs. 

“Eh?” 

“You heard me. _Lesbian_. Do I look like a man?” 

“With that hat? I can’t really tell.”

“Oh, ha bloody ha, Listy.” Rimmer pushed past her, fuming. “What do I have to do to get some respect in this place; take my top off and wave my breasts at people?”

“That’d certainly get their attention.” 

“I just don’t understand. One minute this man-“

“-what man?”

“This man, whatever, it doesn’t matter-“

“ _What man?_ ”

“Some construction worker; they let men do that over here for whatever reason. It’s ridiculous; they don’t seem to get any proper work done. Half of them were flirting with passersby rather than minding their equipment.”

Lister nodded. “Same as back home, then.”

“Anyway,” Rimmer droned on, ignoring her, “one minute one of them was showering me with compliments – you know, ‘nice tits’, ‘check out the legs on that one’, that sort of thing, and asking to have sex with me. When I said I was in a hurry-“

“Otherwise you would have had sex with him, of course,” Lister said, innocently. 

“Maybe! He was an attractive man.”

“Was he?” They should be working on getting a signal working for the time drive to pick up, but what the smeg. Lister was bone tired, and could use a laugh. 

“Yes, you know; flabby and unmuscular, long-haired; very masculine, trousers that dropped down in the back to show off his arse.” 

Lister bit her lip to keep from giggling. It was funny how, whenever Rimmer talked about her ideal man, she ended up sounding like she was describing a porn star parody. Chunky or lean men with pleasingly little muscle, showing off their ridiculously fat, tiny cocks and round asses. Like size mattered; Lister herself didn’t mind them a bit long herself. It wasn’t all about girth, no matter what the girls in the locker room said. “What; and then he called you a lesbian?”

“Yes! Bizarro, am I right?”

Lister sighed. “Rimmer, he called you a lesbian because you wouldn’t sleep with him.”

“But I’m not a man!” 

“Exactly! This is a mirror universe, remember; it’s all backwards. ‘Lesbian’ doesn’t mean male homosexual, it means…” she shrugged, “female homosexual.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense; there is no word for female homosexual; there doesn’t need to be. ”

“There is, here.” 

Rimmer’s eyes widened with sudden panic. “Do you think he knows I’m living with you?”

“Why the smeg would he? He’s only seen you once!”

“But what if he does?”

“So what; this isn’t the nineteen fifties, it’s not the dark ages. They wouldn’t arrest us or bother us even if we were sleeping together.”

“Which we’re not.” 

Lister, giving up, turned back to the disassembled computer she had been tinkering with. “No. We’re not.”

* * *

September, for reasons of unconscionable bastardliness, was turning out to be as scorching as July and August. With their painstakingly reconstructed computer, Lister had been able to communicate, briefly and confusingly, with Kryten once or twice. She’d told her the boys were doing OK, at least, so there was that. Not that they wouldn’t be; they were hardly little kids, but they’d been with Lister such a short time. They were still confused. Kryten did her best, and Hilly was as patient as he was with anyone else, but they just weren’t settling in properly. Their father disappearing for months couldn’t be helping. 

She kicked the computer’s flimsy housing. Smeg it. She wanted to be a good father, she really did! She’d never had one of her own, not really, and well, family was important. 

Over on the sofa, Rimmer was pretending to sleep. She could never quite get the hang of it now that Hilly wasn’t controlling her sleep-cycle, but she was refusing to admit it. Now, however, her eyes were open. “Prostitution,” she said, and Lister nearly dropped the keyboard. 

“Eh?” 

“I figured it out. Prostitution. If gender roles really are reversed in this universe, then women can be prostitutes. We could be here for a while, so we’ll need more money, eventually.” She turned to Lister, her expression grave. “You’re going to have to become a prostitute.”

“Rimmer, there is absolutely nothing about what you just said that isn’t profoundly misunderstood in every way.” 

“It’s the only thing that makes sense!” 

“No, it goiting well isn’t! Look; we’ll work on getting a better signal, and Kryten will get us out of here. No one is going to have to prostitute anything.”

“I just can’t stand it anymore!” Rimmer tore herself from the sofa and steered towards the tiny kitchenette. “Stuck in a tiny room with just you for company, lightyears away from civilization! Honestly, if I don’t get back home soon, I think I’ll go absolutely spare.”

Lister stared at her for a while, and decided it was probably best not to comment. “So go out and get some fresh air.”

Rimmer looked at her as though she’d gone mad. “Have you seen what it’s like out there? They’re not just primitive; they’re absolutely stark raving _mad_. Men are walking around without their top off, completely shamelessly. No one seems to mind! All the women seem to be wearing _skirts and dresses_.”

“That’s normal, for here.”

“I tell you, it’s unnatural. Look at a man’s privates, then look at mine.”

“Do I have to?”

“Which one do you think fits best inside a pair of trousers? It’s bad enough you let Jim and Bexley run around like that-“

“Rimmer,” Lister growled, warningly,

“-And women wear these… these _things_ around their breasts! I saw some of them in a shop window; it must be some sort of punishment device. They go all around the back, like a harness, and sort of comes up…” She ran her hands along her torso, contorting to illustrate.

Lister shook her head. “Probably just some sex thing. People come in all sorts.”

“No; everyone wears them! And that’s not all.”

“I’m not in the mood.” The computer had died again; probably the bad power connection they had down here. Her feet were tingling too, from sitting down too long, no doubt. 

Ignoring her, Rimmer leaned in, conspiratorially. “ _Women do the breastfeeding_.”

“Stands to reason, doesn’t it? Them bearing the children and all?” Lister couldn’t help but shudder. Thank smeg they weren’t going to stay here permanently. 

“But they don’t let them do it in public; they actually tell people off if they _feed their babies_ when someone’s watching!” 

“For someone who’s not gay, you’re paying a lot of attention to breasts, I must say.” 

Rimmer had gone quiet, suddenly. “Listy,” she said, looking suddenly younger and afraid. “I don’t want to stay here.” Their faces were so close. If she reached out, Lister could touch her cheek. Not really thinking about it, she did. 

Rimmer leaned into the touch. 

When the both of them shimmered into nothingness, it was quite a relief for both of them, though Lister couldn’t help but wonder what Kryten would think when they reappeared on Red Dwarf, lips pressed to lips.


End file.
